The movie studios are content to kind of just sleep this week off, having gone all out leading into the Christmas week. We’ve only got one flick on the docket and it in involves the words "Angel" and "Death" so you know it’s going to be good.

The post-Christmas weekend, which is also the last of 2014, saw a nice boost for most movies and some exceptional openings for the newcomers. It paints a good picture for the weekend, but it wasn't enough to dig the 2014 box office out of its major slump.

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Christmas movie season. See what I did there? I took a classic song lyric and used if for my own purposes. Genius. As is often the case with this time of year, studios have a couple of bigger flicks hitting the screens for when people are off of work. We’ve got unbreakable dudes, gamblers and treks into the woods.

As it turns out, Mark Wahlberg did two rather crazy things while preparing to play the lead role in Rupert Wyatt's The Gambler. As we've known about for the last couple weeks, the actor dropped a surprising and dangerous 60 pounds to play the part - but what you may not know is that he also took part in some very high stakes gambling and wound up losing a whole lot of money. We're talking $45,000.

In preparation for his performance as the titular Jim Bennett in The Gambler, Mark Wahlberg made serious sacrifices to his own health and dropped a scary 60 pounds. This idea isn't that rare in Hollywood, as actors like Christian Bale and Robert De Niro have previously made headlines for similar taking similar actions, but what makes Wahlberg's case somewhat different is the fact that he experienced a very strange side effect of his weight loss.

With the fall comes a slew of movies that are gearing for Oscar gold. Then as we move into the winter, a slate of big, flashy blockbusters pile up, demanding our attention. So how do you cut through all this clamor when you're a mid-level thriller about a professor with a gambling addiction? You unleash a trailer like The Gambler's, full of camp appeal and f-bombs, lazily chucked by the always awesome John Goodman.

Is Mark Wahlberg finally in contention for an Oscar? It certainly looks like he could be, because the first images to emerge from The Gambler prove that the usually beefy actor has undergone quite the transformation to star in Rupert Wyatt’s remake. In fact, Wahlberg has even claimed to have lost 60 pounds to play the role, which is especially impressive when you compare his size in the drama to how he looked in Transformers: Age Of Extinction.

Adding John Goodman to any movie is a way to better pique our interest. So a tip of the hat to Paramount, which has added the consummate character actor who recently stole scenes in the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis to their growing ensemble for the remake of The Gambler.

We can expect this remake to be pretty big, as Lange joins box office champion Mark Whalberg as his mother. It will be directed by Rupert Wyatt, who rocked the box office himself with another sorta-remake, 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The original film, scripted by James Toback and directed by Jarel Reisz, told the story of a literature professor named Alex Freed who has a serious gambling addition. This vice results in him not only accumulating massive amounts of debt and recieving threats from bookies, but also alienating the people he loves most.

With the rumors about him directing Star Trek 3 so strong that even J.J. Abrams has been forced to address them, Rise of the Planet of the Apes helmer Rupert Wyatt may be lining up a very different, much more earthbound project. According to The Wrap he's in negotiations to direct The Gambler, a Paramount remake of the 1974 drama, with Mark Wahlberg also in line to take on the role that was originally played by James Caan

Phillips is reportedly in talks to helm Paramount's remake of The Gambler, a 1974 crime drama that starred James Caan and centered on a literature professor brought low by his addiction to gambling. Last summer, Scorsese was attached to direct the remake...

The article is a great slice of Hollywood history if you're interested in that kind of thing, but also a kind of primal cry from a director who clearly knows how the business works-- Paramount owns the rights to The Gambler and nobody actually had to ask him permission to remake it

Martin Scorsese, who seems to constantly have at least four projects in development at a given moment, has picked a new story to add to the pile. THR reports that he and The Departed screenwriter William Monaghan will team up again for The Gambler, a remake of the 1974 drama that starred James Caan